Forty blocks, eleven thousand residents and one ballot: how bright should a street be after midnight?
The ballot paper has one question and five boxes. How bright should Marlow Avenue be after midnight? The boxes run from "as it is now" to "off".
Eleven thousand people live on the forty blocks the lamps cover. Every one of them over sixteen gets a vote, which makes this the largest street-level ballot the city has run.
How it started
Two winters ago the council replaced the old sodium lamps with white ones that use a third of the power. The complaints started the same week. Residents on the upper floors said they could read in bed with the curtains closed. Residents at street level said they finally felt safe walking home.
Both groups were right, and both turned up at the same meeting.
"We spent four evenings shouting about lumens," one shift worker said. "Then somebody asked why we could not just count."
The door knocking
A group of forty volunteers has now knocked on every door on the avenue, twice. They carry a card with the five settings printed as photographs of the same corner, taken on the same night.
What they have learned is that the split is not young against old or renters against owners. It is by floor. Below the third storey, people want light. Above it, they want dark.
What happens next
The count is on Thursday in the school hall. Whatever wins will run for a year, with the lamps dimmed in steps after midnight if the middle option takes it. The engineers say they can change the setting from a laptop in about four minutes.
The council has already had calls from three other districts asking for the ballot paper.
